Dame Jennifer Visits West End Primary Students
The Minister of Education Dame Jennifer Smith recently spent time with an assembly full of West End Primary School students, when she launched their “Readers are Leaders” Programme.
According to West End Principal, Sandra Smith, the “Readers are Leaders” Progamme involves prominent figures in the community visiting the school and sharing the joys of reading with the students.
As the first to participate in the initiative, Minister Smith took time discussing with students how reading has impacted her life, before reading “Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters”, a book written and illustrated by the late John Steptoe. The story of “Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters” is an African tale, which has been compared to the classic fairy-tale of “Cinderella”.
“These are primary-aged children with impressionable minds,” Minister Smith said. “At any given moment their attention can be drawn in so many different directions. So it was a wonderful opportunity for me to have a captive audience of students. Also as this is Black History Month, it was exciting to educate them about the award winning African-American author and illustrator and his works.”
“In doing so, the students became more familiar with the African setting and culture of this story and the ability to compare and contrast this version of ‘Cinderella’ with other versions of the same folktale. ‘Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters’ offered many valuable lessons for the students.”
“West End’s value theme for the month of February is ‘Kindness’ and the moral of the story was on the importance of being kind. The story highlighted such issues as sibling rivalry and other experiences with which the children could relate. ‘Readers are Leaders’ is a programme that the Ministry of Education is proud to support, and I want to commend the Principal, Mrs. Simmons and the faculty of West End Primary for introducing such a worthwhile initiative in to the school.”
Read More About
Category: All
